Parky at the Pictures (DVD 14/6/2012)

The sheer fact that The Artist captured as many hearts as it won prizes is testimony to its geniality, simplicity and poignancy. But it's nigh on impossible for such a slender and familiar variation on A Star Is Born to sustain such hullabaloo. Thus, even though neither the performances nor the craft contributions could be bettered, a certain disappointment is almost inevitable on seeing this much-hyped marvel for the first time. Yet watch it again and the picture's nostalgic charm and technical brilliance become more readily apparent. Indeed, each new viewing reveals another inspired detail or astute allusion to both the lost art of silent film-making and the glamorous myth that allowed 1920s Tinseltown to transform how everyone from a docker to a duchess looked at the world around them.

All is well in the 1927 world of George Valentin (Jean Dujardin). He is shooting a new picture with his Jack Russell co-star Uggie and is adored by a legion of fans that includes Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), who poses for photographs with him after accidentally bumping into him at the glitzy premiere of his latest offering, A Russian Affair. However, the snap that makes the front cover of showbiz bible Variety the next day is set to change both their lives, as it turns Peppy into the mystery girl that the whole of Hollywood is talking about and the buzz convinces George to persuade Kinograph Studios chief Al Zimmer (John Goodman) to hire her when she attends a dance audition.

Some time later, Peppy finds herself as an extra on George's new film and he has such trouble concentrating that he requires several retakes before finally nailing the scene. Intrigued by the newcomer, he goes to her dressing room and pencils in a beauty spot on her cheek that will become her trademark as her star begins to shine ever more brightly in the movie firmament. But things don't go as smoothly for George. Much to the chagrin of valet-cum-chauffeur, Clifton (James Cromwell), his marriage to Doris (Penelope Ann Miller) begins heading for the rocks, while the success of The Jazz Singer heralds in a new era of talking pictures that sees Zimmer abandon George as his voice is unsuitable for the new medium.

Two years later, George loses everything when his sound debut opens on the same day as the Wall Street Crash and audiences prefer to seek solace in Peppy's smash hit Beauty Spot. Cast aside by Doris, George moves into a modest apartment with Uggie and the loyal Clifton. However, he quickly becomes dispirited and reluctantly orders Clifton to find a new employer. In drunken despair, he sets light to his old features and passes out as the nitrate blazes out of control.

However, Uggie races through the streets to find a policeman and George is dragged to safety clinging on to a single can of film. Peppy comes to visit him in hospital and extends her hospitality until he has recuperated. But he is embarrassed to learn that Clifton is now her butler and is even more appalled to discover that she purchased all the belongings he had auctioned off to pay his debts. George storms back to his burnt-out digs, unaware that Peppy had threatened to quit Kinograph unless Zimmer found a role for him in her next venture. He is about to end it all when she rushes in and they finally reveal their feelings for each other.

Back at the studio, George feels out of place. But Peppy has remembered his superb dancing skills and the picture ends with them hoofing their way through a white tie tap routine and George assenting to the director's request for one more take with a flash of his brilliant white teeth and the French-accented phrase, `With pleasure!'

Having already teamed twice on the gleefully politically incorrect OSS 117 capers Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006) and Lost in Rio (2009), Hazanavicius and Dujardin are clearly on the same wavelength. Consequently, Dujardin knows precisely how to pitch each gesture and expression as he shifts from the flash and dash of a Douglas Fairbanks to the more vulnerable pathos of a John Gilbert and Hazanavicius knows exactly how to capture each modulation. The affinity with off-screen partner Bérénice Bejo is equally evident, as Hazanavicius and cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman deftly change their lighting and focus designs as she passes from being a demure Janet Gaynor-style girl next door to becoming a softer-centred version of glamour icon Gloria Swanson.

The striking visuals were achieved by shooting on colour stock and converting it to black and white during post-production. But it's not just Schiffman's camerawork that enables Hazanavicius to evoke the heyday of Fritz Lang, FW Murnau, King Vidor and Frank Borzage (as well as such sound titans as Orson Welles, whose 1941 opus Citizen Kane is frequently cited). Laurence Bennett and Adam Mull's exceptional production and set designs are equally crucial, while Mark Bridges's costumes and Ludovic Bource's score reinforce the sense that time and place have been perfectly encapsulated. Even Gerard Lamps's sound mix is significant, most notably in the sequence in which Dujardin reacts with pantomimic brilliance to the foley noises that he can suddenly hear for the first time in his silent movie milieu.

This audiovisual gag is typical of the sharp satirical wit that always stops well short of pastiche. Indeed, there is nothing but affection in Hazanavicius's reflections on the films of the 1920s and how they and their stars were marketed to an adoring public still coming to terms with such nebulous concepts as celebrity. Thus, the supporting performances are also to be commended, as nobody succumbs to hamming it up, even though there is plenty of scope for John Goodman to lampoon the archetypal mogul or for Missi Pyle to over-reference Jean Hagen in the similarly themed Singin' in the Rain (1952) in her amusing cameo as the peroxide siren being upstaged by her affably vain co-star. And let's not forget Uggie, whose victory in the Palm Dog contest at Cannes helped set the ball rolling.

It's too easy to laud this merely as a love letter to the silent cinema. Instead, it is a masterly reminder of the simple power of a well-told story and the meticulously composed image. Words may well have subsequently hijacked what should still primarily be a visual medium. But The Artist restates the lesson that too many modern film-makers have forgotten that it remains possible to communicate complex emotions with moving pictures.

Jean Dujardin can also be seen this week in James Huth's Lucky Luke (2009), a comic Western that takes its inspiration from a Belgian comic strip that was started in the 1940s by the cartoonist Maurice De Bevere (aka Morris) and reached the peak of its popularity in the 1960s when he teamed with René Goscinny, the co-creator of Asterix the Gaul. The characters have previously been filmed by Italian spaghetti star Terence Hill in Lucky Luke (1991) and by Philippe Haim in Lucky Luke and the Daltons (2004) and the brash fondness of their parodic approach is replicated here. Indeed, being much closer in tone to the OSS 117 romps, this affords Dujardin the opportunity to play up to the camera while firing off quick draw quips that he scripted for himself with producer Sonja Shillito.

In 1846, young John Luke (Mathias Sandor) survived the massacre that accounted for his parents. Having taught himself to be so swift a sharpshooter that he can out-draw his own shadow, Luke (Jean Dujardin) has since devoted himself to righting wrongs across the United States. He is aided in his endeavours by his talking horse, Jolly Jumper (Bruno Salomone), and can usually rely on the support of Calamity Jane (Sylvie Testud) and Jesse James (Melvil Poupaud), although the Shakespeare-quoting outlaw secretly harbours the ambition to prove who has the twitchiest trigger finger.

Never one to shirk a challenge, Luke agrees to revisit Daisy Town for the first time since being orphaned at the request of President Winston H. Jameson (André Oumansky), who is concerned that the villainous Pat Poker (Daniel Prévost) will disrupt his plans to extend the railroad. However, Luke breaks his vow never to harm anyone by killing Poker with a single shot to the chest and he announces that he is quitting crime fighting to farm his father's land with the help of saloon girl sweetheart Eleanora `Belle' Starr (Alexandra Lamy).

As he settles down, Luke makes the acquaintance of Colonel McStraggle (Yann Sarfati), Governor Morris Austin Cooper (Jean-François Balmer) and Doctor Doxey (Daniel Campomenosi). But he quickly discovers that some folks don't want him around and he has to join forces with Calamity, Jesse and Billy the Kid (Michael Youn) in order to confound an infernal machine and finally learn the truth about his parents' murder.

Reuniting with Dujardin for the first time since the surfing comedy Brice de Nice (2005), Huth gets off to a decent start with a slick homage to Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), which sets the pastiching tone that cinematographer Stéphane Le Parc, editors Antoine Vareille and Frederique Olszak and composer Bruno Coulais follow throughout. But Huth quickly picks up the pace and the action becomes increasingly frantic as it comes less to resemble the source material than such postmodern Hollywood oaters as Barry Sonnenfeld's Wild Wild West (1999).

Indeed, several French critics have denounced Huth and Dujardin for straying too far from Morris and Goscinny's original conception. But Pierre Queffelean's production design and Olivier Bériot's costumes couldn't be more faithful, while Dujardin downplays with an admirable restraint that allows Poupaud and Youn to hog the limelight as the grandiloquent wannabe thespian and the petulant adolescent who keeps lollipops in his gun belt. There is certainly an excess of incident (much of it throwaway), while too many minor characters are mere ciphers and the denouement is overly flamboyant. But this rattles along at a laugh a minute and one can but hope that Dujardin's Oscar success will mean that many more of his pictures supposedly tailored for Gallic audiences will find their way across the Channel.

Unfortunately, things have not always quite worked out that way for Audrey Tautou since she first charmed British audiences in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie (2001). In fact, there were those who questioned why so many of her lesser vehicles manage to secure a UK release when Stéphane and David Foenkinos's Delicacy failed to live up to the expectations generated by its inclusion in the 2012 Rendez-vous with French Cinema programme. Adapted from the younger sibling's bestselling novel, this is certainly a whimsical romantic comedy, but it's no worse (and markedly less cynical) than dozens of others of its ilk from the States that are dubbed date movies and given an easy critical ride because they're designed to be fun rather than deeply philosophical tracts on life, love and the mysteries of attraction.

When Audrey Tautou walks into a Parisian café, handsome Pio Marmaï promises himself he will speak to her if she orders apricot juice. Their first embrace is passionate, their snow-coated wedding in is a picture and everything seems perfect until Marmaï is hit by a car while out jogging. Three years later, Tautou is working for a Swedish company and still deep in mourning. Moreover, she is so determined to resist the advances of unctuous married boss Bruno Todeschini that she impulsively kisses unprepossessing workmate François Damiens, a portly, balding Swede whose lack of personality is encapsulated by his taste in chunky knit pullovers.

They go on a date and Damiens suddenly sees the world in a new light. But a second tryst convinces him that it would be better to break things off before he gets hurt. Yet Tautou persists, even though best friend Josephine de Meaux is appalled that she could contemplate touching such a slob and flirtatious secretary Audrey Fleurot and concerned mother Ariane Ascaride are equally disapproving. However, not even the sight of Damiens in tight shorts can dissuade Tautou from the growing conviction that this physically and emotionally awkward milquetoast may just be the man to mend her broken heart. Thus, when the vengeful Todeschini transfers Damiens back to Sweden, Tautou decides to seize the moment.

The winner of several prizes in France, David Foenkinos's eighth novel was noted for its literary ambition, with one chapter coming in the form of a screenplay, while others contained such digressions as recipes and football results. However, the movie version owes too great a debt to Amélie to seem quite so original. Nonetheless, the use of voiceover and first-person perspectives enables the viewer to share in the confusion felt by both Tautou and Damiens as they start to realise the depth of their unsuspected feelings. Even the winsome Emilie Simon songs on the soundtrack eventually seem as neatly judged as Remy Chevrin's sly camera moves and Maamar Ech-Cheikh's Scandinavian kitsch sets.

Yet it's also easy to see why this has been dismissed as sentimental and formulaic. In many ways, it's a female variation on Bertrand Blier's Trop belle pour toi (1989), although Isabelle Huppert has also recently teamed with Benoît Poelvoorde in Anne Fontaine's similarly themed odd couple comedy My Worst Nightmare. But, even though Tautou trots out her familiar gamine mannerisms, she sparks genially with Damiens, whose self-deprecation and reluctance to place himself or Tautou in a position either could regret give the picture a melancholic charm that compensates for its romcomedic shortcomings.

Another unlikely liaison occurs as the thin lines between fact, fiction and fabrication are trodden with exquisite care by Chilean Cristián Jiménez in Bonsai: A Story of Love, Books and Plants, a quirkily clever adaptation of poet Alejandro Zambra's bestselling novella about passion, literature and lies. But this is no precious dissertation on highbrow affectation. Indeed, in slipping between timeframes and exploring the limitations of truth and the link between creativity and deceit, Jiménez fashions a cinematic celebration of the written word that is witty, sensual and sweetly melancholic.

Revealing at the outset that would-be author Diego Noguera's soulmate dies, Jiménez switches between the college crush on feisty fellow student Nathalia Galgani that prompted the indolent Noguera to discover life after reading À la recherche du temps perdu and the tentative tenement relationship with translator neighbour Trinidad González that forces him to pen a self-reflexive tome to convince her that he is collaborating with acclaimed novelist Hugo Medina when, in fact, he had been sacked from transcribing a new handwritten manuscript because his typing fees are too excessive.

But is the text an approximation of what Noguera thinks Medina should be writing or is it simply a romanticised variation of his time with Galgani in the coastal city of Valdivia, when he was more of a reader (albeit lazy and mendacious one) than the writer he now pretends to be in Santiago? It could even be argued that the whole Galgani episode is an invention - after all they seem to spend most of their time making love or devouring the works of Gustave Flaubert, Marcel Proust and Raymond Carver - and that what we see are reveries rather than flashbacks to eight years earlier. And is the bonsai tree that Noguera purchases symbolic of his limited ambitions or his realisation that while his first romance never had time to grow, a second might?

The delicious uncertainty is what makes this such a captivating watch. The odd moment of deadpan comic inspiration helps, too, most notably when Noguera falls asleep while reading Proust on the beach and is left with a telltale sunburn mark on his chest that almost betrays his duplicity to Galgani on their first date. However, despite the excellent performances, as many are likely find the film's temporal and emotional shifts as frustrating as Noguera's inability to grow up and tell the truth.

But, as in his debut feature, Optical Illusions (2009), Jiménez proves a teasing storyteller and he is ably abetted by cinematographer Inti Briones, whose lustrous images are wittily and precisely assembled by editor Soledad Salfate. Even the use of both Bach's Cello Suites and the rhythmic rock of indie band Panico amusingly emphasises the contrasts between highbrow aspiration and middlebrow reality and the grand amour that Noguera so craves and the perfunctory physicality for which he has to settle.

Deceit also drives the action in Damjan Kozole's A Call Girl (2009), the eighth feature by the Slovenian director who remains best known here for the 2003 people trafficking drama, Spare Parts. Once again, he combines deft character detail with lowering thriller elements in examining the corrupting influence of consumerism and the false promises of a better life that have debased the country's moral code since it secured independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. However, the tension is allowed to dissipate in the latter stages and only the compelling presence of debuting stage actress Nina Ivanisin fixes the attention.

Leaving the backwater town of Krsko and convincing parents Peter Musevski and Maja Sever that she is studying hard in the capital Ljubljana, 23 year-old Ivanisin moonlights as a high-class prostitute who offers her services to visiting businessmen and diplomats in the city during Slovenia's presidency of the European Union. She lives in a swanky apartment and treats herself to the best of everything, while using her charm to coax tutor Alex Valic into falling behind with her essays and even failing an exam.

Not even best friend Marusa Kink suspects a thing about Ivanisin's double life. But, when an elderly man has a heart attack after popping Viagra, Ivanisin becomes the subject of a police search when the ambulance arrives too late to resuscitate the client, who turns out to have been a German member of the European Parliament. Unable to operate under her `Slovenka' pseudonym, Ivanisin quickly runs out of money and not only has the bank pressurising her about mortgage payments, but also has pimps Dejan Spasic and Aljosa Kovacic threatening to drop her from a high-rise balcony unless she accepts their protection.

Unable to persuade ex-boyfriend Uros Furst to forget the debt she owes him and lend her some more cash, Ivanisin slinks back to Krsko. She is greeted with typical disdain by the spiteful Sever, but Musevski hopes she will help him revive his stalled musical career by organising a comeback gig for his band, Electroshock.

Exposing the socio-economic problems that have accompanied post-Communist liberation has become something of a stock in trade for Eastern European film-makers since the mid-1990s. But Kozole focuses here on the generation that has known nothing but unfettered capitalism and he is clearly dismayed by what he sees. Yet, despite the fact that Ivanisin is a pathological liar and a casual thief who is so obsessed with making a fast buck that she is utterly indifferent to the degrading things she has to do to earn it, she emerges as a surprisingly sympathetic character. But she is not alone in losing touch with reality, as Musevski is convinced that a gig in a crummy local club will transform him into the veteran cosmic rocker.

The performances are admirably anti-heroic, with the poised and pallid Ivanisin deftly revealing small chinks in her icy exterior that raise disconcerting questions about the incident(s) that caused her to become so guarded and grasping. To this end, Kozole and cinematographer Ales Belak make smart contrasts between the urban and parochial locations. But the screenplay fails to smooth the transition from hard-boiled, lowlife thriller to quirky, small-town dramedy and, consequently, the action fatally loses the impetus that not even a teasingly ambiguous ending can fully restore.

Norwegian Pål Sletaune made an impressive start to his directorial career with Junk Mail in 1997. However, neither You Really Got Me (2001) nor Next Door (2005) made much of an impact in this country and one suspects his fourth feature, Babycall, only received a theatrical release because it is headlined by Millennium trilogy star Noomi Rapace in a role that earned her the Best Actress prize at the Rome Film Festival. Bearing an uncanny likeness to Álex de la Iglesia's The Baby's Room - which formed part of the Spanish tele-series Films to Keep You Awake (2006) - it is scarcely original. However, it is competently unsettling and Rapace delivers another eye-catching performance as a paranoid single mother in danger of becoming detached from reality.

Having being forced to flee the abusive ex-husband who tried to harm their eight year-old son Vetle Qvenild Werring, Rapace moves into a new apartment in a distant town in the hope of starting afresh. However, she is so afraid for Werring that she never lets him out of her sight, even making him sleep in her bed. But, when social workers Stig Amdam and Maria Bock insist that the boy is allowed to go to school, Rapace agrees to let him have his own room, providing she can monitor him with the baby alarm she purchases from seemingly affable salesman Kristoffer Joner.

One night, Rapace thinks she hears cries of terror coming from the intercom and rushes into Werring's room to find him soundly asleep. When she asks Joner about the incident, he assures her that the device must have picked up interference from another monitor. Despite being dubious, Rapace has more to worry about, as Werring has befriended decidedly disconcerting classmate Torkil Johannes Swensen Høeg and has begun to experience what may be hallucinations (such as the appearance of blood on one of Werring's drawings and the sudden transformation of a lake into a car park), but could also just as easily be conclusive proof that something sinister is going on in the apartment.

Striving to produce a tense psychological study rather than an outright horror, Sletaune makes eerie use of Roger Rosenberg's oppressive sets and adeptly sustains the mood of unease through the combination of John Andreas Andersen's prowling camera, Tormod Ringnes and Christian Schaanning's fearsome sound design and Fernando Velazquez's skittish score. He is also superbly served by the teasingly unpredictable Joner and the magnetic Rapace, whose growing sense of derangement is sufficiently rooted in parental perturbation to remain plausible. But this is only ever superficially creepy and the flaws in the scenario become gapingly evident as Sletaune pulls the rug away in a denouement that is almost insultingly duplicitous and manipulative in its resolution and its refusal to explain a host of red herrings.